5 KEY ATTRIBUTES

Line managers have a key role in building trust and engagement in the organisation. In his article on The Power of Great Managers, Towers Watson’s Global Practice Leader Adam Zuckerman identified the five key attributes of top-performing managers:

Developing people: crafting personalised plans focused on an individual’s long-term growth and development

Delivering the deal: ensuring employees are rewarded for their efforts using the entire portfolio of intrinsic rewards at their disposal

Energising change: building the organisation’s resilience to change by developing the individual’s understanding of and ability to cope with the entire spectrum of change

Authenticity and trust: acting as a role model of humility, intellectual honesty, interpersonal sensitivity and behavioral consistency.

Looking across the model’s components, we can clearly see a common theme: Effective managers understand what each individual requires and leverage the organisational systems to deliver it.

This means paying attention to each person’s talents and interests, and customising their work, their development opportunities and their rewards accordingly.

The model predicts these actions will improve sustainable engagement and, therefore, business performance. Of course, it is always desirable to test these assertions and examine their unique aspects inside each company by incorporating questions like those found in the table below into your next engagement survey.

My career experience includes HR Director and senior executive roles in Barclays plc and Tesco plc leading major transformation and complex change programmes reporting at Board level .I have an MBA, BA and I am a member of the CIPD and Association for Coaching. I am an accredited coach with over 12 years of private client coaching experience and as an associate consultant with Penna (UK) dealing with career, life,executive and business coaching and counselling. I work in mentoring and coaching partnerships with executives to help achieve gains of importance to them.I help people of all ages, different cultures and job levels to understand more about themselves, their impact on others and how to develop across major dimensions in life.
I respect the integrity and confidentiality of my clients building on their existing great skills and abilities and evolving enhanced self guidance : ” No one in the world was ever you before, with your particular gifts and abilities and possibilities.”Specialties: Holistic / systemic approach to coaching
Remote coaching via Skype and Apple Facetime
Coaching for Executive performance /High Potential including C level
First 100 days
Career Coaching/portfolio lifestyle
Coaching for powerful presentations
Life Coaching
Executive advice on staff insight surveys
Facilitating key meetings and C- level strategic retreats engaging around people decisions that flow from business choices
Business/HR Strategy ,Change Leadership
Communications strategy
Psychometrics,NLP,Emotional Intelligence
Confidence&Self Esteem
Creativity coaching
Independent Consulting propositions coaching
Non Executive director coaching
Business Report/White Paper writing
Graduate career coaching

Just a thought :

Five frogs are sitting on a log.Four decide to jump off. How many are left?

Answer: five. Why? Because there’s a difference between deciding and doing.

Some leaders are very task-oriented; they simply want to get things done.

Others are very people-oriented; they want people to be happy.

And others are a combination of the two.

If you prefer to lead by setting and enforcing tight schedules, you tend to be more production-oriented (or task-oriented). If you make people your priority and try to accommodate employee needs, then you’re more people-oriented.

Neither preference is right or wrong, just as no one type of leadership style is best for all situations. However, it’s useful to understand what your natural leadership tendencies are, so that you can then working on developing skills that you may be missing.

A popular framework for thinking about a leader’s ‘task versus person’ orientation was developed by Robert Blake and Jane Mouton in the early 1960s. Called the Managerial Grid, or Leadership Grid, it plots the degree of task-centeredness versus person-centeredness and identifies five combinations as distinct leadership styles.

Understanding the Model The Managerial Grid is based on two behavioral dimensions:

* Concern for People –This is the degree to which a leader considers the needs of team members, their interests, and areas of personal development when deciding how best to accomplish a task

* Concern for Production –This is the degree to which a leader emphasizes concrete objectives, organizational efficiency and high productivity when deciding how best to accomplish a task.

Using the axis to plot leadership ‘concerns for production’ versus ‘concerns for people’, Blake and Mouton defined the following five leadership styles:

Country Club Leadership – High People/Low Production This style of leader is most concerned about the needs and feelings of members of his/her team. These people operate under the assumption that as long as team members are happy and secure then they will work hard. What tends to result is a work environment that is very relaxed and fun but where production suffers due to lack of direction and control.

Produce or Perish Leadership – High Production/Low People Also known as Authoritarian or Compliance Leaders, people in this category believe that employees are simply a means to an end. Employee needs are always secondary to the need for efficient and productive workplaces. This type of leader is very autocratic, has strict work rules, policies, and procedures, and views punishment as the most effective means to motivate employees.

Impoverished Leadership – Low Production/Low People This leader is mostly ineffective. He/she has neither a high regard for creating systems for getting the job done, nor for creating a work environment that is satisfying and motivating. The result is a place of disorganization, dissatisfaction and disharmony.

Middle-of-the-Road Leadership – Medium Production/Medium People This style seems to be a balance of the two competing concerns. It may at first appear to be an ideal compromise. Therein lies the problem, though: When you compromise, you necessarily give away a bit of each concern so that neither production nor people needs are fully met. Leaders who use this style settle for average results and often believe that this is the most anyone can expect.

Team Leadership – High Production/High People According to the Blake Mouton model, this is the pinnacle of managerial style. These leaders stress production needs and the needs of the people equally highly. The premise here is that employees are involved in understanding organizational purpose and determining production needs. When employees are committed to, and have a stake in the organization’s success, their needs and production needs coincide.

This creates a team environment based on trust and respect, which leads to high satisfaction and motivation and, as a result, high production.

Applying the Blake Mouton Managerial Grid Being aware of the various approaches is the first step in understanding and improving how well you perform as a manager. It is important to understand how you currently operate, so that you can then identify ways of becoming competent in both realms.

Step One: Identify your leadership style.

* Think of some recent situations where you were the leader.

* For each of these situations, place yourself in the grid according to where you believe you fit.

* Look at your current leadership method and critically analyze its effectiveness.

* Look at ways you can improve. Are you settling for ‘middle of the road’ because it is easier than reaching for more?

* Identify ways to get the skills you need to reach the Team Leadership position. These may include involving others in problem solving or improving how you communicate with them, if you feel you are too task-oriented. Or it may mean becoming clearer about scheduling or monitoring project progress if you tend to focus too much on people.

* Continually monitor the way you work and watch for situations when you slip back into unhelpful habits. Step Three: Put the Grid in Context It is important to recognize that the Team Leadership style isn’t always the most effective approach in every situation. While the benefits of democratic and participative management are universally accepted, there are times that call for more attention in one area than another.

If your company is in the midst of a merger or some other significant change, it is often acceptable to place a higher emphasis on people than on production. Likewise, when faced with an economic hardship or physical risk, people concerns may be placed on the back burner, for the short-term at least, to achieve high productivity and efficiency.

Note: Theories of leadership have moved on a certain amount since the Blake Mouton Grid was originally proposed. In particular, the context in which leadership occurs is seen as an important driver of the leadership style used. And in many situations, the “Team Leader” as an ideal has moved to the ideal of the “Transformational Leader”:

Someone who, according to leadership researcher Bernard Bass:

* Is a model of integrity and fairness;

* Sets clear goals;

* Has high expectations;

* Encourages;

* Provides support and recognition;

* Stirs people’s emotions;

* Gets people to look beyond their self-interest; and

* Inspires people to reach for the improbable.

SUMMARY

The Blake Mouton Managerial Grid is a practical and useful framework that helps you think about your leadership style.

By plotting ‘concern for production’ against ‘concern for people’, the grid highlights how placing too much emphasis in one area at the expense of the other leads to low overall productivity.

The model proposes that when both people and production concerns are high, employee engagement and productivity increases accordingly. This is often true, and it follows the ideas of Theories X and Y, and other participative management theories.

While the grid does not entirely address the complexity of “Which leadership style is best?”, it certainly provides an excellent starting place to critically analyze your skills and improve your general leadership skills.

I provide excellent leadership coaching for managers and senior executives aiming to develop new levels of impact and enjoyment in their role . See my proposition and details here : Peter Cobbe Coaching

The approach is based on careful diagnostics and then a customised programme to suit very specific individual needs and current work challenges . The end result is evolution in leadership style and impact.

Insights on establishing Credibility

Unlike height or weight, your measure of credibility isn’t an objective measure. It is not something you either have or you don’t.
Credibility is more like a linear scale on which others give you a rating. It is a perceived quality, one that people assign to you based on the complex interplay of a number of elements.
Identifying the elements of credibility is important because a high score on one or two elements does not guarantee a high credibility rating. It’s the interplay that matters. For example, experts are usually considered highly credible, unless or until they are perceived as biased or self-serving. Lack of integrity can cancel out the positive impact of expertise.
It is worth considering five elements of credibility and to examine your impact in light of these elements. Give yourself a score between one and ten on each of these elements based on how you think others perceive you—

Aim to rate yourself on what others can observe rather than on what you intend. Once you see your strengths and weakness, you can take positive steps to boost your credibility in the eyes of others.

Credibility Element 1: Integrity

A key element of credibility involves transparency, trustworthiness, and moral predictability. We feel good about people who embody the phrase, “what you see is what you get.”
The dictionary definition of credibility is the power to inspire belief. For example, a credible witness is one whom we have reason to believe. Credibility implies a commitment to truth, fairness, and objectivity. In addition, we assign high credibility to people who have clear moral standards and who are known to stick to them.
Be careful not to underestimate the importance of honesty and integrity in the workplace. People who have a track record of being objective and truthful are perceived as more credible than those who don’t. . Conclusions based on scientific or systematic inquiry are more credible than those based on subjective judgments.

According to researchers Kouzes and Posner, the number one trait people are looking for in a leader is honesty. We know from experience that one failure to disclose an important truth can ruin an entire career.

To boost your credibility on this element, consider the following:

• Invest time in clarifying your values and examining your behaviour in light of them
• Make a commitment to consistently tell the truth
• Build a reputation for ethical behaviour
• If you make a mistake, be truthful about it rather than cover it up
• Give credit to colleagues and subordinates for their work
• When you change your stance on a position, do so for objective rather than political reasons

Credibility Element 2: Competence

Experts enjoy a much higher degree of credibility than those who lack expertise. As society’s knowledge expands, we rely more and more on people who can demonstrate deep expertise, often with a narrow focus. We trust experts to understand the scope of an issue or project, to know the right questions to ask, and to know how to find the answers to those questions. In today’s world, there is no credibility without expertise.

Perceived expertise comes from a blend of a person’s education and experience. People with doctoral degrees in a field obviously have more credibility than those who lack a degree. At the same time, people who have “come up through the ranks” or have worked in diverse jobs within an industry are considered to be experts. These folks usually have more perceived expertise than new college graduates.

Expertise turns into competence when it is put to the test. A person earns her/his credibility as competent by succeeding at assignments and projects over time. A track record of successfully applying knowledge and a willingness to continue learning increases perceived credibility.

To boost your credibility on this element, take the following actions:

• If needed, complete your degree or consider the next degree
• Obtain a license to practice or a professional certification appropriate to your field
• Request high-visibility projects to establish a track record
• Ask to participate on task forces with key people in your organisation so they can see your competence firsthand
• Participate in meetings, asking probing questions and making insightful comments
• Attend conferences in your field and engage in continual learning

Credibility Element 3: Sound Judgment

Just as a good friend can be counted on to listen well and encourage you to make wise decisions, a credible person can be counted on to analyse complex situations, ask intelligent questions, and make good decisions. A person with sound judgment usually has both cognitive and intuitive gifts. This person takes a big-picture rather than a myopic view and a long-term rather than a short-term perspective.

An astute CEO, for example, might have a track record of acquiring businesses or creating products just ahead of demand. This person has a track record of correctly anticipating future trends and preparing for them.

To boost your credibility on this element, take the following actions:

• Consider the impact of your decisions on other departments and groups
• Ask others for input into your decisions—especially regarding the impact on them
• Avoid snap judgments
• Be willing to admit mistakes
• Read books and use other media to gain insights by management and relationship specialists
• Stay current on the trends within your industry and company

Credibility Element 4: Relationally Sensitive

People with high credibility know how to ask questions about our values and interests, to listen intently and with empathy, and to pull people together. These are the people with high emotional intelligence to balance the arrogance sometimes comes with high expertise.

A person develops a track record in relationships in the same way that they develop a track record in performance. If they become known for building commitment and cooperation, for being level-headed and fair, everyone will want them on their team.
Those who have the most perceived credibility are usually the ones who are relationally sensitive.
To boost your credibility on this element, take the following actions:

• Demonstrate willingness to learn from others and from your own mistakes
• Demonstrate concern for others’ values, goals, and objectives
• Cultivate the ability to listen well
• Take time to build relationships with informal conversations
• Don’t say something behind a person’s back that you wouldn’t say to their face
• Be generous with credit to colleagues and subordinates
• Take time to understand another’s point of view before refuting or rejecting it

Credibility Element 5: Likeable

Research studies consistently reveal that people respond positively to others whom they like. They trust them, they cooperate with them, they approve their proposals, and they buy from them. Likeability is as important as ability. Successful people balance expertise with likeability. It is a proven formula for success.
One view is that there are four ingredients to likeability:
1. Friendliness,
2. Relevance,
3. Empathy,
4. Realness.
Relevance and empathy are ingredients of relationship sensitivity as described above. Realness, or authenticity, links to integrity, the first element of credibility. Likeability is much more than a feel-good characteristic.

Emotional intelligence guru, Daniel Goleman, and co-authors Boyatzis and McKee, describe the importance of optimism and a lighthearted perspective in the workplace, asserting that leaders who have the ability to express enthusiasm and upbeat emotions attract other people. In their book, Primal Leadership, these researchers put it succinctly:

Research has proven it: Optimistic, enthusiastic leaders more easily retain their people, compared with those bosses who tend toward negative moods.
To boost your credibility on this element, take the following actions:

• Communicate optimistically by describing challenges rather than problems
• Focus on what can be done as opposed to what can’t be done
• Go out of your way to be friendly, even if you aren’t an extravert
• Practice finding the humour around you, especially in stressful situations
• Express gratitude privately, publicly and in writing
• Demonstrate an interest on matters of personal importance to others
• Congratulate others and celebrate their successes
• Credibility is a Package Deal

SUMMARY

No single element described here can guarantee high perceived credibility. After all, an expert without integrity might be a dictator. A likeable person who lacks judgment will make stupid decisions.

People assign you a degree of credibility based on how they rate you on the interaction of the elements of credibility: integrity, expertise, sound judgment, relationship sensitivity, and likeability. Perceived credibility is a package deal. Remember, too, that your credibility is based on observed behaviour, not on your intentions.

NOW ACCEPTING NEW CLIENTS : Coaching via Skype / Facetime / 1 to 1 meetingsMy career experience includes HR Director and senior executive roles in Barclays plc and Tesco plc leading major transformation and complex change programmes reporting at Board level .I have an MBA, BA and I am a member of the CIPD and Association for Coaching. I am an accredited coach with over 12 years of private client coaching experience and as an associate consultant with Penna (UK) dealing with career, life,executive and business coaching and counselling. I work in mentoring and coaching partnerships with executives to help achieve gains of importance to them.I help people of all ages, different cultures and job levels to understand more about themselves, their impact on others and how to develop across major dimensions in life.
I respect the integrity and confidentiality of my clients building on their existing great skills and abilities and evolving enhanced self guidance : ” No one in the world was ever you before, with your particular gifts and abilities and possibilities.”Specialties: Holistic / systemic approach to coaching
Remote coaching via Skype and Apple Facetime
Coaching for Executive performance /High Potential including C level
First 100 days
Career Coaching/portfolio lifestyle
Coaching for powerful presentations
Life Coaching
Executive advice on staff insight surveys
Facilitating key meetings and C- level strategic retreats engaging around people decisions that flow from business choices
Business/HR Strategy ,Change Leadership
Communications strategy
Psychometrics,NLP,Emotional Intelligence
Confidence&Self Esteem
Creativity coaching
Independent Consulting propositions coaching
Non Executive director coaching
Business Report/White Paper writing
Graduate career coachingJust a thought :Five frogs are sitting on a log.Four decide to jump off. How many are left?

Answer: five. Why? Because there’s a difference between deciding and doing.